NCIHC Working Paper - Pacific Interpreters

1 The National Council on Interpreting in Health Care Working Papers Series GUIDE TO initial assessment OF INTERPRETER QUALIFICATIONS This Guide was produced under a contract between the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health and the National Council on Interpreting Health Care ( NCIHC ), and with support from the Illinois Department of Human Services, Bureau of Refugee & Immigrant Services through the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. Copies are available from the NCIHC . The National Council on Interpreting Health Care April 2001 Guide to initial assessment of Interpreter Qualifications April 2001 1 General Background and Purpose The Field of Health Care Interpreting Today Language interpretation in health care and other community settings is essential in order for people with limited English proficiency to have access to health care and other public services.

2 Interpretation is a complex and demanding task. Therefore, it is important to determine the qualifications of those called upon to interpret. How is this to be done? With the exception of organizations for signed interpretation, there is no national organization that certifies the competence of Interpreters . Washington is the only state with formal certification or licensing of Interpreters who work in health care settings. There even continues to be some disagreement about what counts as competent performance and what Interpreters should be expected to do or not to do. Meanwhile, those who employ, refer or contract with Interpreters need a way to decide whom to hire. Thus they need a way to assess the qualifications of those who interpret for them or who are candidates for employment as Interpreters .

3 Purpose of this Guide The NCIHC Guide to initial assessment of Interpreter Qualifications is intended to lay out an adequate and efficient strategy for initial assessment of interpreter qualifications in the absence of (or in conjunction with) certification by a government agency or professional organization. It can be used by organizations such as hospitals and clinics seeking to employ Interpreters as well as by agencies that refer Interpreters for assignments in health care settings. The guide outlines a recommended strategy for assessment and components of a comprehensive assessment that can be adapted to particular settings and purposes. It can be used by agencies within a community that choose to collaborate on designing and administering a single assessment instrument to identify a local pool of qualified Interpreters that can be called upon to work in any of their facilities.

4 Development of this Guide This Guide to initial assessment of Interpreter Skills was developed by the Committee on Standards, Training, and Certification of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care and reviewed and approved by the NCIHC Board of Plans for preparation of the guide were developed during a meeting of the NCIHC at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in June 2000. A detailed outline was developed during a two-day meeting of the committee in Chicago, Illinois, in December 2000, and the guide itself was written and edited by the committee co-chairs and the full membership of the committee. 1 The individuals who jointly wrote this guide were Maria-Paz Beltr n Avery, Ann Chun, Bruce Downing, Marcia Maynard, and Karin Ruschke, (all members of the Standards, Training, and Certification Committee of the NCIHC ), along with NCIHC Board Co-chairs Shiva Bidar-Sielaff and Cindy Roat.

5 We wish to thank Margaret Malone of the Center for Applied Linguistics for generously sharing her expertise regarding oral skills testing and reading a draft of the guide. We also wish to thank Gaea Honeycutt, who edited a near final draft. Guide to initial assessment of Interpreter Qualifications April 2001 1 This guide is based upon widely accepted views of what constitute the basic skills of the health care interpreter. The sources we consulted include the Massachusetts Medical Interpreters Association s Medical Interpreting Standards of Practice, the Standard Guide for Language Interpretation Services developed by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), and the Bridging the Language Gap report written by Minnesota s Interpreter Standards Advisory Committee.

6 The authors drew upon two main sources in thinking about the make-up of an initial assessment process. One is a screening process used successfully over the past few years by a consortium of health care agencies that employ Interpreters in Madison, Wisconsin. This group, which includes Shiva Bidar-Sielaff of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, jointly developed an initial assessment process, which it offers on a regular basis to select Interpreters qualified to work in any of the participating institutions. The second source is the formal certification process being developed by the Massachusetts Medical Interpreters Association under the leadership of Maria-Paz Beltr n Avery. Both Bidar-Sielaff and Avery contributed to the preparation of the present guide.

7 Guide to initial assessment of Interpreter Qualifications April 2001 1 Terms and Concepts in this Guide Interpreter The interpreter assists two or more persons, speaking different languages, to communicate orally (or in a signed language) with one another. The interpreter does so by attending to what the speaker is saying, capturing the meaning of each utterance, and then repeating the message of that utterance in the language spoken by the other party or parties. (The terms translation and translator are reserved for the process of re-expressing the content of a written text in written form in another language.) An interpreter expects the parties to the conversation to speak to each other, not to the interpreter, so that the interpreter can work in first-person mode.

8 For example, the interpreter would say I where the speaker says I, rather than something like The doctor wants me to ask you .. or She says she has a bad headache. Health care Interpreters Professionals who interpret bilingual conversations, which usually involve one or more health care providers (generally speaking English), a patient or client (speaking another language), and sometimes members of the patient or client s family. Health care Interpreters work in clinics and hospitals, in private medical and dental offices, during home health visits, and in health education. Health care Interpreters usually work in the consecutive mode, giving the interpretation of what has been said after a speaker pauses or finishes speaking, rather than in simultaneous mode, in which the interpreter renders the interpretation as the speaker continues speaking.

9 assessment In this guide, assessment refers to the process of determining a person s qualifications for a particular type of employment in the present case, employment as a health care interpreter. initial assessment is assessment of individuals qualifications at the point where they are either being hired or being admitted to a list of Interpreters available for assignments as needed an interpreter pool. initial assessment is also referred to as employment screening. initial assessment must be distinguished from at least two other types of assessment : performance assessment and formal assessment for licensure or certification. Performance assessment is an on-going or periodic assessment of an interpreter s performance on the job.

10 In performance assessment there is less emphasis on the basic skills that have already been determined and more emphasis on the interpreter s actual job performance and adherence to professional standards in his or her daily activities. The Massachusetts Medical Interpreters Association s Standards of Practice are well designed for use in assessment of interpreter performance. Licensure is the process by which an individual obtains an official license or authorization to perform a particular job. A candidate for licensure may be required to achieve a passing score on a formal assessment of skills, but in some cases licensure only requires completion of a course of training, or a knowledge-Guide to initial assessment of Interpreter Qualifications April 2001 1 based, rather than skill-based, assessment .